July 3, 2006

When Do We Publish a Secret? Whenever we Damn Well Feel Like it, Morons!

Here's the story you've been waiting to hear - finally, the truth from the NYT - sort of, well - indirectly...:

[...] SINCE Sept. 11, 2001, newspaper editors have faced excruciating choices in covering the government's efforts to protect the country from terrorist agents. Each of us has, on a number of occasions, withheld information because we were convinced that publishing it could put lives at risk. Our lives. Thus, we did not publish the controversial 'Mohammed Cartoons' out of fear that our heads might become divorced from our necks. See how discrete we can be?

Last week our newspapers disclosed a secret Bush administration program to monitor international banking transactions. We did so after appeals from senior administration officials and even cut-and-run Democrats to hold the story. Our reports -- like earlier press disclosures of secret measures to combat terrorism -- revived an emotional national debate, featuring angry calls of "treason" and proposals that journalists be jailed along with much genuine concern and confusion about the role of the press in times like these. How rude.

We are rivals. Our newspapers compete on a hundred fronts every day. We apply the principles of journalism individually as editors of independent newspapers. We agree, however, on some basics about the immense responsibility the press has been given by the inventors of the country.

Make no mistake, journalists have a large and personal stake in the country's security. That's why we have agreed on this one guiding principle: President Bush must be defeated at all costs. Because President Bush is the greatest threat to national security, we believe it is our right--no, our duty--to reveal to the public just how dangerous he is. We will put our reporters--not us, hell, we both have bodyguards-- at risk for the greater good of removing Bush. It's called sacrifice people.

... Sure, the virulent hatred espoused by terrorists, judging by their literature, is directed not just against our people and our buildings. It is also aimed at our values, at our freedoms and at our faith in the self-government of an informed electorate. They don't really want to 'kill us', or 'force us to change our foreign policy', or 'establish a Taliban-like state in Iraq as a first step towards the greater Islamic Caliphate' as our fascist right-wing opponents claim. No, what the terrorists really want is for Americans to put informants who give away national secrets and the journalists that expose them in jail. Don't you get it?

... If the freedom of the press makes some Americans uneasy, well then they can just go take a flying-f--k off a bridge. We know what secrets you should know, not your democratically elected governments (which really wasn't 'elected' anyway, since Bush stole it). If you tell us we don't have the moral authority to declassify sensitive information for public consumption, the terrorists have already won.